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Kenya will push for a global ban on elephant ivory sales when countries assemble for a United Nations wildlife conference in South Africa later this year, its president has announced.

Uhuru Kenyatta said he already had the backing of several other African countries for the plan, aimed at stamping out poaching and putting ivory out of circulation for good.

“This will ensure African elephants are accorded the highest level of protection,” he said. “To lose our elephants would be to lose a key part of the heritage we hold in trust. Quite simply: we will not allow it.”

104 tons of seized elephant ivory and rhino horn in Nairobi National Park, which will be the biggest ever burn of wildlife contrabandCredit:
Ben Curtis/AP

Between 20,000 to 33,000 elephants are poached every year in Africa for ivory to be carved into trinkets largely for the Chinese market. In central Africa, 70 per cent of the forest elephant population has been lost in a decade.

Today there are only 470,000 African elephants left in the wild in 37 countries, and poachers are still killing more than are born every year, raising the risk of extinction.

On Friday, the presidents of Uganda, Gabon and Kenya were joined by some of the world’s leading conservationists, government officials and ranger teams at a pledging conference aimed at strengthening existing anti-poaching initiatives.

Between 20,000 to 33,000 elephants are poached every year in Africa for ivory Credit:
THOMAS MUKOYA/REUTERS

Dr Richard Leakey, the renowned palaeontologist and chair of the Kenyan Wildlife Service, said his intention was to squash the value of ivory, and appealed to other African countries to burn their ivory stockpiles.

South Africa has always refused to burn ivory and was until recently planning to ask the UN to lift the ban on the domestic trade in rhino horn. Botswana, which has the world’s largest elephant population, is vehemently opposed to burning ivory, saying it devalues the pachyderms in their citizens’ eyes.

Dr Leakey said burning ivory delivered the message that it would never be back on the market “under any circumstances”.

“I would appeal to southern African states to consider the implications of holding on to their stockpiles. While you have those you are suggesting that there will be a future market,” Dr Leakey said.

The KWS chair also suggested that politicians’ pledges to protect elephants might not be genuine, revealing that in Kenya there are still 20 to 30 poaching “kingpins” whose names were known to the authorities. “They could not operate with the impunity we are seeing if you did not have some form of protection from law enforcement agencies,” Dr Leakey said.

“As long as there is a vibrant market because of corruption across much of this continent and porous borders then we are going to lose the elephant.”

Lee White, the English head of the Gabonese wildlife service, said the country was still losing 2-3,000 elephants each year to “increasingly violent” poaching teams sent by corrupt elements of the military in neighbouring Cameroon.

President Ali Bongo of Gabon, who has won plaudits internationally for ploughing money into wildlife protection, said once poaching was quashed, African governments would face another major challenge with spiralling populations and conflict over land with elephants.

“Poaching has turned elephants to refugees, they flee and find safety close to our rural villages,” he said. “They eat and trample crops and terrify our rural population. “These are my voters and they think elephants are more important to me than people. They joke that at the next elections the elephants should vote for me.”